Leonard Roy Frank 1932-2015

MindFreedom is saddened to learn of the sudden passing of Leonard Roy Frank, accomplished and widely respected psychiatric survivor activist and author. After having his mind brutally assaulted by psychiatry as a young man, Leonard inspired many people around the world by steadily over many decades, acquiring and sharing vast amounts of knowledge and wisdom not only about psychiatry but about all aspects of the human experience.

Leonard Roy Frank

Leonard overcame the most brutal forced psychiatry, to go on to dedicate his life to a 'life of the mind', spending decades in contemplative study and reflection. Forced electroshock and insulin coma 'treatment' at the hands of forced psychiatry unleashed catastrophe on his life and mind, but through dedication and learning, he was able to piece together his assaulted mind and become a man with an enormous intellectual grasp on a wide range of topics. He was the author of many successful quotation books which were published by Random House, and for decades participated in activism fighting for human dignity in the face of psychiatry's violence. Leonard had an immense appreciation for the succinct wisdom and insights that can be encapsulated in short quotations, and it is appropriate in this moment of loss that we reflect upon this quotation of his:

"We
have to be witnesses for those millions who are not speaking up now for
whatever reason. That’s the role that I feel our movement needs to play
right now in society--to speak up, tell the truth about what we have
known, what we have experienced in our own lives."

- Leonard Roy Frank 1932-2015

Leonard spent his life speaking up for the millions of people that have been harmed by psychiatry's violence. He spent his life dedicated to peaceful study and learning, always seeking out every day of his long life, just a little more knowledge. His life in thought and deed, was one of commitment to nonviolence.

He was generous with his time and spirit, and even in his later years, many young survivors of psychiatry would travel to San Francisco to meet with this respected doyen of the movement.

Leonard Roy Frank was, and forever will be, considered one of the founding fathers of the modern psychiatric survivors movement. He will be dearly missed, but through his published work, he has given the interested reader years of food for thought.

Reprinted below is a MindFreedom personal story that Leonard provided us with in 2001. But first here are some links to Leonard's published work:

The following site has a detailed collection of Leonard Roy Frank related links, 'From the Files of Leonard Roy Frank'...

I was raised in Brooklyn, New York. I went to a private high school, and
then went on to the Wharton School of Finance at the University of
Pennsylvania, where I graduated with a major in marketing in 1954. I
then went on to serve in the Army, stationed at Fort Myers in Virginia
in a presidential honor guard. Following that, I returned to New York
City, where I obtained a real estate license and was in real estate
sales for two or three years in that area and in Florida. In 1959, I
came out to San Francisco. I had in mind at that time that I would
continue my career as a real estate salesman.

I was working for a real estate firm in downtown San Francisco.
During that period, I became interested in reading, particularly in
subjects that previously had not interested me all that much: politics,
history, religion, psychology and philosophy. Suddenly these things
seemed just illuminating. I remember the book that really turned me
around was Mohandas Gandhi’s autobiography, subtitled “My Experiment
With the Truth.” That book led me to become a vegetarian and to get
interested in religion, spirituality, and nonviolence.

My whole outlook and attitude changed. Previously I had been very
business oriented and materialistic. I had now become much more
idealistic and much more interested in spirituality. I became more and
more interested in reading and studying, and less and less interested in
real estate. I soon lost my job; I had lost all interest in brick and
mortar. I was determined to get at the core of these new ideas and to
put them into practice in my own life.

My parents did not appreciate the changes that I was going through.
While I saw these changes as an indication of progress, they saw these
changes as a step backward for me. They were very, very concerned,
urging me to see a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist to get some help. I
proceeded to tell them that I didn’t need that kind of help.

Well, that went on for about two years and my parents became
increasingly worried about the situation. I was running out of money. I
had been living on my savings up to that point. I was getting near the
end of my resources.

Then, in October of 1962, they insisted that I see a psychiatrist.
And when I wouldn’t, they had the psychiatrist visit me by sending the
psychiatric police and arresting me. I was removed from my apartment,
and taken to a local hospital – Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco. I
was kept there for a few days and then sent on to Napa State Hospital. I
was there for about a month and a half and then I was sent to a private
sanitarium called Twin Pines in Belmont, California, which is just
south of San Francisco.

I was able to obtain a large part of my psychiatric records nine or
ten years after I was released from the hospital. There was the medical
examiner’s report – just a paragraph – with a provisional diagnosis of
schizophrenia. This report read in part that I had become asocial, had
grown a beard, was not working, had become a vegetarian, and to use
their exact phrase, “was living the life of a beatnik to a certain
extent.”

On that flimsy evidence, I was committed. I was put into a
psychiatric prison, in effect, and kept for a period of 7 to 7 ½ months.

They urged me to shave off my beard and be “normal,” according to
the records. I just wasn’t cooperating with them at all. I felt that I
was a prisoner. But I imagine they sincerely believed that I was a
mentally ill person in need of treatment—shock treatment.

According to the records, there were 85 shock treatments – 50
insulin coma treatments and 35 electrode convulsive treatments. And,
while I was in a coma from the insulin, they shaved off my beard. So it
was not only the shock treatment that was administered to me at this
particular hospital, but beard shaving therapy as well!

It was while I was in the comatose state, at least in 35 of those
insulin comas, that they administered the electroconvulsive treatments.
And that was like a double hit--if the insulin wasn’t going to get you,
they’d get you with the electric shock. That was really the heavy
artillery of psychiatry. There was nothing worse that they could have
done to me, short of a lobotomy.

There were also psychiatric drugs which were administered to me at
that time. One of them was Prolixin. The records indicate that I had a
terrible reaction to it.

In the end, I got out of the mental health facility because they
were done with the treatment. I also got out because I made a real
effort to play along and be passive, answer their questions, etc.

It was a task to rebuild my mind after coming out of the hospital. I
immediately knew that I was going to have to do a lot of studying to
get back to where I’d been. So I returned to the books that I vaguely
remembered reading during the period preceding the last shock treatment.
I started reeducating myself. I also kept lists of words on 3x5 cards,
usually pairs of words or triads of words derived from books. That was a
wonderful exercise, because it reestablished my ability to associate
one word with another.

Anyway, I pretty much stayed in my apartment and studied. I started
attending a morning Bible reading class in downtown San Francisco. There
I became friends with an arts dealer. I eventually went to work for him
as an art salesman in his gallery. After about a year, I had a small
measure of success doing that, which led me to think that I actually
could do something on my own. So I opened up my own art gallery. I
didn’t do too badly and I kept it open for five years.

In 1971, I met David Richman and Sherry Hirsch who had just started a
publication called “Madness Network News.” The first issue was an 18 or
20 page mimeographed newsletter on alternative ways of looking at
psychiatry, which I related to very well.

I really got a taste of anti-psychiatry through my work with Madness
Network News. However, we felt that having a journal like that wasn’t
really enough to do the job. We needed to take political action.

So we decided to form another organization, and called it the
Network Against Psychiatric Assault or NAPA. NAPA focused on the use of
forced electroshock at a hospital which is now a part of the UC Medical
Center in San Francisco. We mounted a campaign with protests,
demonstrations, press releases, and television and radio interviews
against their use of electroshock at this hospital. At the same time, we
found out about a legislator who might be sympathetic to introducing a
bill that would regulate and restrict the use of electroshock and
psycho-surgery. Through his good efforts, there was a law passed in
California, and I think it was the first one in the country, that did
restrict and regulate electroshock to some degree. We also campaigned
against psychosurgery as well, conducting a sleep-in in the office of
Governor Brown in Sacramento to protest the questionable deaths of
psychiatric inmates at state hospitals, mostly because of drugging.

I’ve also worked on editing several publications. In 1978, I
produced a compilation called The History of Shock Treatment. I’ve had
three books published since 1996. The first was called Influencing
Minds. My second book, the Random House Webster’s Quotationary, consists
of more than 20,000 quotations organized into a thousand categories
arranged alphabetically. Then in November 2000, Random House published
another book of mine, Random House Webster’s Wit and Humor Quotationery.

Today, I see psychiatry as an enormously powerful force in American
and western society generally--essentially a repressive force that is
destructive of human values. This is one that we need to fight against
and battle against, and I think it is our responsibility as survivors to
do that. We need to be the voice of the untold numbers of past and
present victims of psychiatry. We have to be witnesses for those
millions who are not speaking up now for whatever reason. That’s the
role that I feel our movement needs to play right now in society--to
speak up, tell the truth about what we have known, what we have
experienced in our own lives. We must emphasize the need to change human
attitudes, so that we can rid society of psychiatry as a force that is
able to impose itself on individuals who for whatever reason do not,
will not and cannot fit in, cannot play a role that has been assigned to
them by the rest of society.

The final quotation Leonard ever shared on Twitter?

“The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of the beloved community.” Martin Luther King (1929-1968), 1958

Leonard was beloved by the global community of psychiatric survivors, a community he honored and contributed to his whole life. Leonard's meaningful life is an inspiration to us all to redouble our commitment to our nonviolent struggle to end psychiatry's violence.

Rest in peace, dear friend.

Below is a short film about Leonard:

A quotation of Leonard's has taken on a life of its own on Twitter, where it is re-tweeted endlessly.

"Paths clear before those who know where they're going and are determined to get there."

- Leonard Roy Frank

Leonard, you knew where you were going and we all believe you got there.